Can discounts expand local and digital currency awareness of individuals depending on their characteristics?

Abstract

Research background: Because of enabling a greater amount of money circulation and addressing the needs of individuals in specific regions, local and digital currencies have become more important for local economic and sustainable development, especially in last decade. However, their awareness by potential users have become one of major constraints to their extensive usage. In this regard, discount have been used to increase the awareness of individuals. 

Purpose of the article: As discount is used as an effective promotional tool. This study pays regard to this indicator and aims to investigate whether the  discount rate is positively associated with local and digital currency awareness of potential users. Moreover, this research also includes job positions and age of the respondents into the analyses due to potential existence of differences in the awareness of people regarding their characteristics.

Methods: The research employs a questionnaire survey and acquires data from 407 workers of a local business in Cieszyn Silesia region of the Czech Republic. The researchers run Binary Logistic Regression analyses in IBM SPSS Software to examine the relationship between these specified variables.

Findings & Value added: The research substantiates the fact that potential users who demand more discount rates are more likely to be aware of local and digital currencies. Moreover, potential users who work in lower job positions and demand more discounts are more acquainted with these currencies. Although the existence of a relationship between age and local currency awareness is not proved, older people who demand discounts with higher percentages are more informed about digital currencies than younger individuals. Higher elasticity in discount demand, mutual interactions and relations, such as social media and internet usage of potential users, might be the reasons of these results. This study makes significant contributions to the literature by confirming the significance of individuals? ages and occupational statuses in the awareness of local and digital currencies and the positive relationship between their discount propensity and awareness.

Keywords

awareness, local currency, digital currency, discount rate, age and job positions of individuals

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